Climate Smart Smorgasbord

Today, myself and the other SESEF delegates joined the Swedish students in a "climate smart" (low carbon) potluck lunch hosted by our host high school in Landskrona Sweden, which is the city where we are living for the duration of the confrence. The participants were divided into groups composed of students from both schools, and each group was asked to prepare a traditional Swedish Christmas dish for the fifty or so people who attended the event. The goal of the potluck was to create the most carbon efficient and environmentally friendly meal. Many groups focused on foods packaged in recyclable material as well as foods that were produced near the place where they were put on the market, so as to support the local economy and reduce the amount of carbon that entered the atmosphere during the transportation process. My own group and serval others chose to walk to the store where they purchased the food and carried our food in reusable cloth bags to avoid the use of paper and plastic bags. One group was especially creative and cooked their food on a stove that had already been preheated during the preparation of an entirely different meal, in order to avoid wasting energy to preheat another stove. The most Carbon efficient meal was served cold and emitted no carbon in the preparation process. This idea of climate smart, small carbon footprint eating fits right in with the Swedish lifestyle. Things such as energy efficient, and in some cases energy free heating and cool methods, as well as the use of public transportation and healthy low carbon footprint transportation such as walking and biking have all been adopted by the average Swedish household. Climate smart living methods are also seen everywhere here in Copenhagen as well, particularly at the Bella Center, the official site of the climate conference. Everywhere I go in this massive center a recycling system is in sight, the cafes here serve minimally packaged food that appeals to every ethnicity and lifestyle in order to encourage the people to eat at the conference center to avoid using energy for transportation off site for meals. While the energy use here is still great, everyone is still doing their part to offset the carbon footprint of the conference.